Two traveling hunters who pulled over to snooze were unlucky to have somebody pilfer from the back of their pickup truck but lucky enough that apparently the thief was one of the worst ever.
Despite a chainsaw, a tote full of expensive hunting gear, and other valuable items within easy reach, all the bandit made off with was a suitcase full of regular street clothes while Kelcy Deeds and Cameron Hershberger slept, lightly, in the cab at an Interstate 80 rest area between Laramie and Cheyenne.
Well, there also was a bag of hand-roasted coffee beans from Belize. So, if the thief was crestfallen to discover just how dismal his score was, at least he could find condolence in a world-class cup of coffee.
"I and Cameron were saying that's the one thing we were upset about," Deeds, whose suitcase was taken, told Cowboy State Daily. "We weren’t going to have that nice, fresh coffee for our hunting camp.”
Originally from Pennsylvania, Deeds lives in Belize. That’s on the northeast coast of Central America, and coffee beans grow there.
“I actually roasted those coffee beans myself,” he said.
Trying To Catch Some Zs
He and Hershberger, who is from Ohio, were traveling to southeast Wyoming.
Hershberger has a black bear tag and came to hunt with his uncle, Owen Miller, an accomplished Wyoming bear hunter.
Deeds tagged along for the adventure.
Exhausted from traveling, he pulled over in the wee hours Tuesday for some shut-eye in the pickup cab at the Abraham Lincoln Memorial Monument.
“We really didn’t sleep that well,” Hershberger said.
Sometime around 5 a.m., a “white van with duct-taped windows” pulled into the lot and parked alongside them.
Hershberger said he thinks it was occupied by a lone man.
“That had to have been who took the suitcase; it was the only other rig in the parking lot at the time,” he said.
To make more room in the cab, Deeds had put the suitcase in the bed of the truck.
“Thank God it wasn’t my backpack; that had my passport and my camera in it,” he said.
Why Just That Suitcase?
It wasn’t until they prepared to leave later that morning that they noticed Deeds’ suitcase missing.
Hershberger said he was baffled by a couple of things.
First, how the thief managed to so brazenly pilfer from the back of the truck without them noticing because "we were sleeping really lightly,” he said.
And, also, why was only that suitcase taken?
“There was a chainsaw there, my treestand, the tote with my hunting optics in it," Hershberger said. "A $500 sleeping bag. He took the least expensive thing there.”
Near as he can figure, perhaps the thief hoped the suitcase contained a laptop or other expensive electronics.
As it was, Deeds was left with “only the clothes I was wearing.”
So, they made an emergency shopping trip to Walmart in Laramie before moving on to meet Miller.
It ended up costing about $400 "just for clothes for eight days. And nothing fancy, just the Walmart brand stuff,” Deeds said.
Slow Bear Hunting
After they were settled into camp, Hershberger went about trying to take a black bear with his traditional longbow.
In doing so, he’d be following in the footsteps of his uncle, who killed a huge Wyoming black bear with a traditional bow in 2024.
“The bears aren’t cooperating. They only bears that are coming in are really small, and even those aren’t coming in during the daylight,” Hershberger said Thursday, during a phone call from their hunting camp.
Even so, he hoped the hunting would improve.
As for the petty theft, Hershberger said they didn’t report it to the police.
“Maybe we should have,” he said. “It (the apparent thief’s van) was a very distinctive vehicle."
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
